Stacey Cunningham: President of the New York Stock Exchange

I loved the energy, I loved the pace. I loved how how much was happening so quickly, and so it was really an interesting you know, I knew at that point in time, if that's what I wanted to do with my career. That is Stacy Cunningham, and she has what is one of the most powerful icons of the American economy, the New York Stock Exchange, in the Exchange's entire history. She is the first woman in that job. I am Sharon Bowen, and this is Seneca's one Dred

Women to hear. We are bringing you one hundred of the world's most inspiring in history making women you need to hear. Stacy Cunningham became President of the New York Stock Exchange in two thousand eighteen, haven't worked there since two thousand twelve. Before that, she was at NASDAK and Bank of America. She even took a little career break to study at culinary school and work as a chef. Like many leaders, during the past year, Stacy has had

to face down the challenges of COVID nineteen. She won phrase for a hailing of the pandemic. She's also been commended for helping New York Stock Exchange listed companies become more diverse. Listen and learn why Stacy Cunningham is one of Seneca's on Women to Hear. Thank you so much, Stacy for joining us today. Thanks your and I'm excited to sit down and get a chance to catch up

with the same as well. Stacy, you know you are not only the president of the New York Stock Exchange, but you are the first woman to hold that position exycle. What does that position entail? You know, it varies from week to week. It's hard to predict what a day at the New York Stock Exchange might be. But we are, you know, more than just a stock exchange. Given our global footprint and and the role that we've played in the global economy. For so many years, some humbled by

by holding that position. It might include working with the listed companies that listed companies that are members of the New York Stock Exchange and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a number of trading firms that that are you know, we are the largest world's largest exchange marketplace and trade trade more than any other exchange in the world. But then there's also an element of so many people outside of the exchange that we interact with world leaders

and representatives of so many different industries. And so I have the good, fortunate and opportunity to get a lot to meet a lot of interesting people in my in my lot of work. Great you know, I would say, the few times I've been there for the opening and closing ceremonies, I'm always excited by that experience. So I'm sure that that's a highlight, you know, I would stay Aaron ad charity sort of comes the good and the

bad together. When there's great news out in the world and the market's doing really well, people look at the n y C and and highlight us as a symbol of of of American democracy and the economy. When things are not great, you also see the New York Stock Exchange hung out there as a symbol. So there are times where people might be protesting something and you see the NYC facade as representative of of of of government or of the US and it's an interesting it's an

interesting role to play. So you have to take good of that, and there's no hiding when you're when you're in this role. Now, that's a good that's a good point to say that. So let's talk a little bit about your early years and what was it like growing up, How did it shape you and was there a pivolical moment that led you to where you are today. I'm a big believer in that every single one of your experiences shapes you and prepares you for what might come next,

and that you learn from all of that. And so much of my childhood. I grew up in a large family. I have three three brothers and two sisters, and so it was somewhat of a chaotic household growing up, and I think that all of that played into how I communicate and how I how I operate, and so certainly

my my family life played played a role. My father was in the financial market industry, but never talked much about it, So that wasn't something that I grew up looking toward and aspiring to, you know, want to have a role in finance. I really liked math and science, and so in school that was always what I was studying, and that also sort of played into my background. So I was in in university and I was studying engineering,

and I expect did that. I wasn't exactly sure how I would use it, but that I liked engineering and I liked those those subjects, and so that was where

I was getting my my degree. And the pivotal moment that that you asked about was really when I was trying to get a summer internship and I didn't have an internship lined up, but I was just looking for summer job then, and frankly, I was looking for waitressing jobs back in the mid nineties, and nobody would hire me because I didn't have waitressing experience, which and I really do think I would have been a great waitress, but I didn't wasn't able to convince anybody of that.

And at the time, my dad said, well, maybe I know somebody that might have an internship. Let me see if I can help, And you know, it's a little bit of a cliche, and that he was able to find find somebody who had an internship spot. And I got an internship on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And you know, one of the things I often think about is, you know, I was very fortunate to have that access and that opportunity that gets you in the door, but it doesn't keep you in the room.

You know, you really need to be able to establish yourself as as contributing value to an organization. But at the time, you know, I got this internship and I walked onto the trading floor, and I still walking in there, had no real interest in in pursuing it as a career for me. It was just a way to spend

the next couple of months. And with about fifteen minutes on that trading floor, I knew really quickly that it was a pivotal moment for me and that I was suddenly found what I was passionate about and what I really enjoyed. I loved the energy, I loved the pace, I loved how how much was happening so quickly, and so it was really an interesting you know, I knew at that point in time that that's what I wanted

to do with my career. Later on, I grew to love what what was being accomplished and what it meant for our country and what it meant for opportunity with the capital markets the role that they play. I didn't really understand that when I was a teenager on the trading floor, but I did certainly grow to understand that later. So it had a huge impact, and it was just one moment. It was one summer job that I didn't expect to have such a significant change on my path

and where I went from there. But I was very fortunate to have that opportunity. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. You know, I imagine obviously then and and at the start of your career there were very few women on the trading floor. What was that like? What did you learn from that experience from being one of a few, and how things changed for women since then? Sharon, I think I wish I had a better answer for this,

because I didn't really notice it. And that's something that I think is more just the way I operated, and maybe because I came from a big family and I was sort of just used to chaos, But I didn't notice that there were so few women on the floor. My gender just wasn't something that I thought a lot about, and I didn't think much about the fact that it was unusual for me to be there. I knew there

were a few women. I could certainly tell that I was outnumbered and that there weren't a lot of women on the trading floor, but it wasn't something that I I focused on, and I operated the way I operate and how I you know, I continue to just be who I am, and so I didn't think much about that. I think a lot more about it now, and I recognize how significant it was that I was on the floor, and frankly that that was a result of other women

driving real change. And so Muriel Siebert, who was the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange, I never met her, I didn't know her. I didn't even know who she was when I walked onto the trading floor. But she fought her way into becoming a member of the Exchange, and it was her action that that led to my being able to walk onto the trading floor and not even think about the fact that I was a woman down there. So that that was, you know,

a really important lesson for me. That all of the things that we do and every time we redraw boundaries were redrawing them for everyone else that follows us, not just for ourselves. But I don't have no idea what Muriel's intentions were when she became a female member of the Exchange and whether or not she wanted to drive drive that for women beyond that that follow her, But she did either way, and so that was really significant. Certainly, Uh, as a woman on the floor, I had to hire profile,

and so that actually worked my advantage. There there were so few women that people knew who you were, They recognized you, and so I actually had an easier experience in a lot of ways than some other people did because people saw if I was doing a good job. It was easy to see me because I was a woman,

and you stand out the crowd a little bit. So I think there are good and bad things that come with being an outlier, but what makes you different makes you more valuable, and so the more that you can actually use your your diverse viewpoint and think about things a little bit differently, I frankly became someone pretty quickly that people would ask my advice on issues and on things. That was was you know, I think because I thought about things a little bit differently than so many other

people down there. Thanks for sharing that story and the diversity of perspectives. I'm a firm believer in that. Um, you do remind me. I do know that one of the boardrooms uh at the Exchange has Seabert's jacket, one of her famous jackets sit there. So whenever I see that, I owe a smile seven sharreon. She it took a hundred and seventy five years from when the New York Stock and Change was founded to have its first female member.

That's that's horrifying, you know, it was. It was far too long, and she had a lot of challenges when she became a female member. Wasn't easy for her, but she certainly paved the paved the road for so many to follow. So has shift a little bit and and talk about the pandemic and uh, you know, because of the pandemic, you had to shut down the Trading Fluid Exchange for a couple of months and then you partially

reopened it. Um, what are the pivots did you have to make doing COVID in Were there any particular changes that were actually for the better that you would see as part of the future. I think so many of us had to rethink how we do things over the past year in light of the pandemic, and frankly, we were challenged on so many fronts. I mean, we were challenged as a business, we were challenged as individuals, as families, as a society, and in the US as a as

a country. You know, we we were dealing with so many different issues at the same time. And in the midst of all of this, the pandemic was spreading. And a big part of what the New York Stock Exchange does is how we is the trading floor in the value that we provide to our listed companies and their

investors because of the way we trade stocks. But having those people on the trading floor became clear as the as the virus was spreading really rapidly in New York that we didn't know enough about how to protect each other. We didn't want to be a strain on the health care system, so we made the decision to close the trading floor. What we learned during those two months, aside from how to protect ourselves so that we could reopen it more sitting, you know, and reduce the risk there.

We also saw the value of how we trade stocks. So with the floor closed, our stocks didn't trade as well as they trade with the floor open, but they still traded better than other markets that we compete with because so much of our model is really three different elements.

It's one our technology that is cutting edge and better than any exchange technology in the world, and it was really strained and stressed, you know, during during the volatility in the market in March, and performed really really extraordinarily well. To accountability. So every stock that's listed on the New York Stock Exchange has somebody who's responsible for overseeing trading in that stock, and they have obligations to to make better markets, to have a better bid and ask prices

out in the marketplace. And then three is human judgment, then human the human oversight. Those three elements are really what creates our very unique market model that the NYC offers our customers. When the floor was closed, we were just losing that that human element piece, but we still the accountability and our technology, and what we saw was our outperformance was doesn't come just from the trading floor.

It comes from those three combinations. So we still outperformed versus others, but did not meet our own standard of performance that we typically have when we when we have our full offering with the trading floor. That became an opportunity for us too, and frankly, there were academics that studied it and measured it, so became an opportunity for us to go out to institutional investors and show the value of having that accountability and having our our floor

as part of our offering for for customers. So it was a real educational moment. We made some other changes both in how we operate our markets as well as how we provide value to our customers that are are listed companies that are coming in to celebrate milestones. Everyone

is seeing the opening closing bell ceremonies on TV. We moved a lot of that to virtual and using a R and VR technology to to have great a really fun experience for their for their companies and their employees that couldn't come in and join as part of a celebration. So there are a lot of things that will keep us part of our future, whether it's how we how we operate the markets, as well as how we celebrate, how we celebrate our community certainly bringing together the community.

You know. One of the things that we did pretty quickly would start working with Dr Scott Gottlieb, who is the former Commissioner of the f d A, to to help educate our listed company community on what was going on and how how they can protect their employees and their and their families and how they should be thinking about the steps they should take in light of the pandemic, and so bringing that community together first around COVID, second

around the digital transformation of their businesses, having a lot of our tech CEO speak to the broader the broader NYC community about their products and services that they have and how they're managing and navigating and changing the future of work in the future of how we all interact. So bringing that community together was a big part of of how we went through the past twelve months. So being a resource in a unique way when we were all not sure how to deal with COVID and how

to protect our employees. So I hadn't thought about it from that perspective, but that's what a great service as well senecas one hundred women to hear we'll be back after this short break. You've said in the past that you know, capitalism is the story of the American dream, but that capitalism also needs a tune up. What kinds

of changes would you like to see? When I think about our role, you know, our mission is to help companies raise money so they can go out and change the world and share and provide opportunities for others to share in that success. That's where I think we need to make sure we're still meeting that second half of

the equation. So somebody can found a dreamer could come here, found a business, build it up, become very wealthy, and create jobs along the way, scale their products and services so they're available to the masses and not just the few of means. But they need to share that success. If it's not a story of shared success, we're going to lead to a bifurcation of wealth that we've seen happen here in the US, and that that that starts

to change the way things are working. So it know, doesn't become a model that works for everyone if it's

if we're not focusing on that shared success. One of the major shifts that we've seen is companies are staying private much longer, which means they're growing in the private space because they have access to capital there, and then when they go public, they've already really seen their most rapid growth years and so others aren't sharing and that that rapid period of growth they're sharing in in in more muted growth later once they're public. So that getting

companies public sooner is a big part of that. So we need to look at a balance of the benefits and obligations of being a public company because there are choices. Companies have more choice now than they did before because they can go to other places for for to raise capital.

It's not just the public markets. We need to make sure that our public markets are focused on investor protections but don't end up deterring companies from going public because that means that the everyday American doesn't share in that success and doesn't get to join. You know that that wealth creation and that American dream has to be a story of shared success. So that's one of the reasons you can talk to just a little bit about the

direct listing. Yeah, so because companies have options to raising money, they're asking questions about how they want to go public, and it's a really interesting development in the capital market space. Companies have more choices now than they've had ever in

there and and we we've ever seen before. And a big part of that is because if if raising capital isn't their primary driver for going public, they started to ask questions about and specifically Barry McCarthy, who is the CFO of Spotify, said well, I'm going public because of all the other benefits of being a public company, but not to raise money. And so why do I need to do an I p O and raise money? Can I just have the New York Stock Exchange price our

stock and we can start trading there one day. And he also wanted to democratize access to that their their company and through an I p O. When you go through the traditional process of an investment bank underwriting and offering and allocating it out to customers, not everyone gets that allocation so many of them, you know, it's it's limited the night before, and not everyone gets to share

in that that process. And Spotify really wanted to democratize that access so that all investors were on a level playing field. So they came to the New York Stock Exchange at the end of two thousand sixteen and we implemented and designed worked with them in the SEC to create the direct listing and that's how they went public, and there have been a few other company ease uh that have followed suit on the New York Stock Exchanged

that way. But some companies started saying, what if I do want to raise money at the same time, And so we recognize that direct listing to date has decoupled capital raising from going public, but now what if I want to do both of those things. So we've been working for the past eighteen months to introduce the ability to raise capital but have the market price that offering in instead of having an I p O. And we recently received approval from the SEC to launch that. So

that's a really exciting development. I think it's really reflective of some of the trends that we're seeing in how companies are going public and the types of things they're

looking to achieve. And so now what I think you're going to see going forward is companies asking questions about what their goals are and how what mechanism of going public, whether it be an I p O or direct listing or SPACK special purpose acquisition corporation, what are they trying to accomplish in which one of those paths to the public market best meets their needs. Those are great tune ups for sure. You know, one of the other trends that's been a big focus is on E s G investing.

You know, that is investments that seek positive returns in long term impact on society, the environment, and the performance of businesses. Can you talk a little bit about how the New York Stock Exchange is encouraging s G investing and then also tell us a little bit about the advisory board and its focused on board diversity as well. Yeah. E s G is such an important topic and it is one of the fastest growing areas of investment that

we've seen. There's a study that just recently came out and looking at the two thousand eighteen to two thousand twenty period, the percentage of dollars that are invested in a professionally managed assets that are invested in E s G strategies has grown. So now currently one in three professionally managed dollars is invested in the E s G strategy. So it's it's certainly investors are demanding the change that they want to see and that's a really good outcome.

So we've been very focused on helping our companies meet the needs that they're trying to their goals to accomplish with respect to e s G, whether it be around climate, and providing them with data, providing them with guidance how to tell their stories around e s G, and providing them with solutions and tools for things like board diversity. So many of our our companies are looking to change the diversity profile on their boards, but most board seats

are are found. Most board seats are filled through networking and relationships that already pre exist. So we tapped into the NYC network and you with you as as a

co founder, launched the NYC Board Advisory Council. That council members part of their obligation is to provide a list of diverse candidates that they would recommend and vouch for as a as a board as a board member, so that the companies that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange that are looking for new board members can use the network of not just their own personal networks, but the collective NYC personal network of ceo s that

they can find those those those diverse members. Things like that things around the data we collect e s G data on five dred different criteria in ice data services that we can then echo back to listed companies so they can see how they stack up against their peers. Where there's information that isn't accurate, so they can they can clarify it with investors because very often there's misinformation out there. Looking at so many different avenues that we

can help them navigate this space. It's a big area of focus for us, and investors are definitely driving and demanding the changes that they want to see, which is I think appropriate. So one of the things that often comes up is what the exchanges role is in E S G and a number number of different issues, And just because of the topic we just talked about, I think it's important that we let investors have choices and be able to choose what behavior that they want to see.

Our markets are designed to balance investor protections with investor choice. That's what makes them the deepest, most liquid markets in the world. I draw the line at using our regulatory authority to define the investable universe, because then we take away that choice from investors. So if we were to require very specific E s g UH criteria around any of these topics, it would lead to investors no longer having access to those opportunities. We want to see companies

going public because that's how they share the success. But we will see the changes that we want to see because investors are demanding them and and that's that That's I'm very encouraged and optimistic by the fact that investors are saying that diverse companies are run better and they perform better, and so you better have diversity throughout your organization. We are seeing them them focus on their stakeholders and so it's it's really encouraging to see the evolution of

companies in response to investor demands. I'm really excited about that and to be able to play a role in the progress that's being made. But you know, just definitely want to applied you for your your leadership in that respect. So what makes you optimistic about the future and what gives you hope? Yeah, I think we went through a challenging year on a lot of fronts, and it brought front and center a lot of issues that we're struggling with and and we've had to ask ourselves a lot

of tough questions. Are we ready for a global pandemic? You know, are we meeting the needs of our Are we living up to the equality standards that we outlined for the country, Are we as our political or political voices being heard. There are so many questions that we faced as a as a as a country, as businesses, as individuals, and I can't I have to. I have to admit that I think we didn't love all of the answers. Clearly, we weren't ready for a global pandemic,

and and and we we needed to. We need to learn from these issues. I think the real question is how do we how do we make ourselves stronger and better? How do we focus on our future. That's something we've had to do as a business all along. Every time the markets restrained, we learned from those major market events and we enhance the resiliency in our markets. And that's why when the markets were really under pressure, they operated

smoothly because of all the changes that we've made. That's what we need to ask ourselves now, all the all the tough questions that we've had to face. I'm optimistic. I'm excited about the fact that they're going to make us better because we we now need to focus our energy on driving change so that we can be proud of the the question, the answers to the questions that that are tossed our way. So I really am optimistic. I mean it took some pain, but very often are

our most significant growth comes out of crisis. And there's a clarity that comes with crisis on what's most important and where do we need to focus our energy? And I think collectively, not just at the New York Stock Exchange, but including the NYC and everywhere we're we're looking how can we how can we be the best versions of ourselves? And and there's a clear path to that. But that's

a great note to end on. Stacy and uh, I want to thank you so much for speaking with me today and keep keep up the great work you've been doing. Thanks Sharon, I look forward to catching up in person. What a pleasure to talk to Stacy Cunningham. She has a perspective that few can match. Here's some things I

took away from that conversation. First, there's a great advantage and having the outsider's perspective, as Stacy says, what makes you different is what makes you more valuable and the more that you can actually use your diverse viewpoint to approach things a bit differently, the better for you and for your company. Second, the value diverse viewpoints is never being recognized across the financial world. Investors are calling our companies to foster social good, to focus on things like

diversity as well as the environment and other positives. And that, says Stacy, what us You're in the kind of change we can all be proud of. Finally, in the American economy, there is no real success without shared success. As Stacy says, what doesn't work is a continued bifurcation of wealth. Our country's economic model has to be one that works for everyone. Tune in next Tuesday to hear about our next speech, are Women and discover why She's one of Seneca's one

hundred Women to Hear. Seneca's one hundred Women to Hear is a collaboration between the Seneca Women podcast Network and I Heart Radio, with support from founding partner PNG. Have a Great Day.